Get your toboggan on to beat winter doldrums

It’s toboggan season again, not because it’s cold and not because it’s snowy. It’s not because it’s dark most of the day or because the icy wind shoots up your coat looking to cut your throat. Nor is it toboggan season because you fell flat on your back in your own driveway just venturing out of your drafty old farmhouse to pick up your fuel oil bill. No, it’s toboggan season because it’s all those things put together along with post holiday depression and a good dose of a failing global economy thrown in.
What better time to trudge up a hill, plant yourself loosely on an old rickety toboggan, and head swiftly downhill toward potential annihilation with family and friends?
There is something liberating about taunting death. Well actually the liberating part is after the taunts, when you know you’ve survived the scary decent and all you have to do is stay on the sled until it comes to a stop. Everyone is laughing and celebrating the fact that you pushed the laws of physics to the brink but you didn’t break any – and you weren’t even sure where the brink was. What a lucky day! Everyone feels elated simply because they’re alive. Time to head in for that hot chocolate complete with the sugar and caffeine rush. As the blood returns to your extremities it somehow makes winter more bearable. Knowing that you’re not dead is what tobogganing is all about.
Toboggan season doesn’t last very long. Soon the days get longer and the urge to risk your life in an icy chute passes. However it’s here right now so wax up the boggans and get out of the house before the early winter depression lets up.